Samurai Coder

Mickie Grace, discussing Japanese words and phrases that are hard to translate:

カーキチ，鉄道マニアのような熱狂的な愛好者という意味であれば，fanaticが良いでしょう。Fanaticは元々形容詞ですが，名詞として使えば熱狂的愛好者という意味になります。

First of all, “カーキチ” itself is a taboo word. “カーキチ” is a concatenation of the word “car” and “kichigai (frantic in Japanese)” The word “kichigai” is a discriminatory language. You don’t hear the word in public anymore. If you don’t trust me, visit the full story in Wikipedia (written in Japanese). The word is way more strong and derogatory than English counterparts like crazy and insane. You may consider this kotobagari, but I feel the usage is entirely improper.

If you are discussing the pros and cons of such words that often come up as politically incorrect words, you should put a warning to users. For example, if your article starts with “This article may contain explicit, taboo languages, but the purpose of the usage is purely for discussion. I do not support any discrimination.”, then I’m perfectly fine.

For more nonsense, read her other articles.

I sincerely hope that readers of this website avoid taking such shoddy readings seriously. The saddest part of this story is that she doesn’t have readers point out the problem. The article was published on September 28, 2007.

(If you missed Part 1, you’re encouraged to read Part 1).

shunichi arai on Japan’s favorite notebook:

Japanese people tend to move with public transport. So, heavy notebooks are real pain. I think it’s a very good choice for every Asian people, especially for women.

What’s clear from the blog itself is that:

• You can say that wemen are weaker than men. The author will never sued in Japan. The blog is up for more than a day. Nobody tells the blogger what’s wrong. Pretty sad.
• We, Japanese, rely a lot on public transportation, so all the people reside in Asia prefer lighter goods. This argument is taken as rational in Japan.

I will keep an eye on these heavly-biased Japanese bloggers. It’s amazing to see they are not trying to be anonymous.

The about page of the blog:

Asian Intenet people are not strongly tied. Language barrier is a big problem when we communicate with other countries’ people. So, Asian startups are not well known outside of their own countries.

I will never ever need to be tied with heavly-biased Japanese, whose intentions are tendentious.

Speaking of a dictionary, this one is snappy.

howjsay — I don’t find licensing information, but it would be cool if this can be incorporated into other websites. I’m looking to your direction.

My name is not listed. Sucks.

An article on English learing for engineers at mycom.co.jp:

Study strategiesでは目標設定ばかりではなく、記憶のメカニズムを知って日々の勉強に役立てる話題も頻繁に出てきます。よく聞くのは、”the multistore model of memory”という記憶のメカニズムです。人の記憶はsensory memory(視覚、聴覚などの刺激を覚えている記憶)、short-term memory(STM)、long-term memory(LTM)の順に蓄積されていくのですが、覚えていられる時間はそれぞれ、2秒、30秒、無期限となっています。

The author supports Atkinson and Shiffrin’s model on human memory, and attempts to appy the model to language learning.

Hilarious. The model was first proposed in 1968, but today no one argues that the model is valid. I will reiterate my point. It’s bullshit.

I have been reading the series of the articles written by the same author, Yoko Harada. All the 29 articles by her simply show her incompetence to suggest any language learning to anyone. She may indeed have an excellent command of English; however, her knowledge and skills of language pedagogy are little. Articles on learning English by successful developers are truly misleading unless the articles are based on solid knowledge and research on langauge learning.

As I studied English langauge, cognitive psychology, linguistics and pedagogy at a university and finished my degree with a thesis on langauge learning and human memory, I found the articles fairly disgusting.

What should also be noted is that the aurhor never mentions what references she use for writing each article, which is, in my view, unprofessional. (And, yes, this is a serious copyright problem.) I will make a detailed analysis on what she writes.

The aurhor’s name is 原田洋子, and the title of the columns is エンジニアのための英語術. A quick Google search tells you that she is a Java expert. Is this a reason why Java developers are moving to Ruby on Rails?

Nick Webster:

The extraordinary variety of international speech is captured in Toujours Tingo, a new book which draws on more than 300 languages exploring the areas where English fails us.

I’m jayus, aren’t I?

Nova videos on YouTube. I would call this ‘Bankrupcy 2.0’.

Nova, the largest English school business, went bankrupt after extraordinary troubles. As such, many foreigners lose their jobs.

Nova Group in Facebook has now approximately 1000 people, and the number is growing day by day. They discuss their (un-)payment and future of the school. Join the group especially if you are a teacher there and don’t have a chance to interact with other Nova employees.

Let me know if I can do anything. I’m always of service.

On cursing by Steven Pinker, one of my favarite pychologists/linguists.

(via Daring Fireball)

I denounce people who overly misspell in their articles and get paied. No one to double-check? Have any of his readers reported his misspellings? I feel sorry for him.

Update: Justin pointed out my spelling mistake. I’ve also noticed, can the word “misspelling” be plural? I have to admit that I took many linguistics courses at a university. My syntax teacher was a Noam Chomsky’s student. Still I never get English. Sucks.